Proxima
by AnteNomad
Summary: The voyages of a Federation timeship tasked with exploring the universe and protecting its history. Time flies, and the line between preserving the timestream and controlling history is one not always easy to draw.
1. 2158

**_From the Author:_** This story will involve elements that will be confusing for those who try to square it with overall _Star Trek_ continuity. Everything will be explained eventually, but a certain suspension of disbelief may be required in the mean time. Sorry. If you have any questions about anything, please do contact me and ask.

—

**Book One**

"_Displaced"_

—

"_Ship's log, UES _Lafayette_, June 28, 2158. We're entering day six of our patrol; having determined that the contact from Eris warning station was a false alarm, I've deployed the task group for close area defense over Titan. Colonel Vincent expects to have the _Ark Royal_ and her group rejoin us no later than this evening. We remain vigilant, but if the Romulans are truly advancing into the system, it is a very quiet invasion."_

—

"I'm telling you, if we're still out here for the finals, I'm going to nuke something." Major Kaitlyn Schiffer was going over her notes from the armory check she had just overseen with Sergeant Kendrick, the _Lafayette_'s master-at-arms, who was currently verifying that all the weapons lockers were properly resealed. Since the fleet was technically still on Alert Level Red, the checks had to be performed every twenty-four hours even though no Earth vessel had been boarded in the three years since hostilities had begun.

"That'll show 'em, Major," said Kendrick.

"I'm serious," Schiffer insisted as they stepped out of the armory and into the main security office. "I don't even care what. It could be that stupid comet for all I care, but the next thing that comes into Titan space is getting an 80-kiloton Viper straight up its ass. _Nobody_ makes me sit out here through the World Cup and then tells me there's nothing to shoot."

"You don't really think Mars are going anywhere in the match, do you?" That was Captain Jenner, the assistant chief engineer who'd been checking the internal security system. "America will knock them down in the first round — on their way to being obliterated by France, thank you."

"Please," said Kendrick. "France will be lucky if China let them get within striking range, and the Americans won't go anywhere until they learn to play defense."

"Exactly," added Schiffer. "They're all force and no style. Games like that are why God created Andy Sargo."

"Please," scoffed Jenner. "Football is about endurance, and the Martians always fall apart in the second half — when they remember they're three times as heavy as they're used to being."

"You just had to bring gravity into this, didn't you?" Schiffer asked.

Kendrick was on the case as well. "You know what, Captain, Mariner Field's gravity is set to ten percent _over_ Earth's norm for Mars team practices, and they spend half the season terrestrial. The gravity gap is a propaganda gimmick made up by terrestrial pundits who didn't want a Martian team in the first place."

"Even so, the year Mars wins a World Cup will also be the year Earth has been swallowed by the sun," declared Jenner.

Schiffer waved at him dismissively. "Get back to the engine room, or someplace else that's out of my sight." A smirking Jenner obliged. "Ignore him, Sergeant," she told Kendrick, handing over the clipboard for him to attach his signature. "'58 is Mars's year."

"Yes, ma'am," said Kendrick, returning the clipboard and saluting. Schiffer returned the salute, then departed the armory heading back up the corridor towards the bridge. It was just approaching noon in Taipei, so Mars' first match would begin in almost exactly twenty-four hours, plus five more with the time-delay of the broadcast. She was resigned to having to record that one due to being on duty, but if (_when_) Mars advanced, she wanted to commemorate it with something more than sitting at the outskirts of the inhabited solar system because some early-warning stations had cried wolf.

On the bridge, she handed the clipboard to the _Lafayette_'s commander, Colonel Merceau. "Armory report, sir. All's in order."

"Thank you, Major." Merceau scanned over the report, signed it, and handed it off to a yeoman as Schiffer took her position at the tactical console to Merceau's left, scanning over the two dozen blue dots that hovered on the map grid of the terminal's main display. The eight Earth warships and sixteen support drones were deployed in high orbit around Titan, just as they had been when she'd left.

"Colonel, I think —" Lieutenant Ferez, seated behind Schiffer at the sensor station that took up the rear half of the bridge's portside wall, apparently thought better of whatever he'd been planning to say, but then changed his mind once again. "I think there's something."

Automatically, Schiffer moved her left hand to rest over the safety for the console's red master switch, but she didn't look back and her right never left the trackpad that controlled the station's main display. She'd lost count of how many blips they'd been through since the system alert had been sounded, but there had certainly been too many to jump at every new one.

Merceau, however, didn't have the same luxury. "Be specific, please, Lieutenant," he said, though Schiffer guessed that the exasperation in his voice was just as much from having to deal with a new bogey as the radar officer's less-than-helpful report.

"It's fourteen, sir." Ferez sounded fairly concerned about whatever he was detecting; but Schiffer thought the Lieutenant was a little too easily concerned, capable officer though he was.

As did Merceau, apparently. "Is it still a comet?"

"I don't think it _is_ a comet, sir," said Ferez.

"Why not?"

"...I don't know, sir."

Schiffer smiled at the look she knew Merceau was giving Ferez. "Lieutenant..."

"I'm sorry, sir; it's just..." Ferez hesitated. "All the metrics check out — mass, imaging, ballistics — but...it just doesn't feel right. The way it's not on any of our charts, but's passing right through Titan space right now..."

"You think the Birdies made it as a Trojan horse?" asked Schiffer, twisting around to give him a querying look. Ferez shrugged helplessly.

"A Trojan comet," Merceau mused. The idea clearly amused him as well, but his eyebrows twitched a bit. "I suppose it wouldn't be much stranger than the trick they pulled at Centauri." He thought for another second. "Let's check it out. Major, divert Drone Six for a sensor pass; Mr. Barne, send notice to the _Ark Royal_."

"Aye, sir," both officers echoed. Schiffer's left hand returned from the master switch to the keyboard; she input the new course vector into the drone control computer, and waited a minute for the computer to return a new projected deployment for her approval. She approved, and the constellation of dots on the tactical plot began to morph as one accelerated away from the group.

"You think they're really going to attack?" asked Lieutenant Sarbonne from the helm station. "Last we heard, they're barely holding Centauri, and the Andorians will be here inside a week; the Birdies'd be crazy to push into Sol."

"They could be trying to scare the Andorians off," Schiffer theorized. "Attacking makes their position look stronger than it probably is; and if they can get our allies to write us off as a lost cause, the myth becomes reality."

"But that's not going to happen, right?" asked Barne.

"If the Romulans attack, we will defeat them," said Merceau. "If they do not attack, we will wait until the Andorians arrive, and then defeat them. Their invasion has already failed; the rest is a matter of details."

When the captain spoke, that meant the speculation was over. Although Schiffer doubted she was the only one who thought that whether the Romulan fleet invaded Sol or not was a fairly major detail.

Grid Object 14 lay some three light-seconds distant, so the drone would take a while to reach it. The object appeared on sensors as a fairly ordinary cometary body, though it was approaching Saturn on a somewhat unusual trajectory and at an unusually high speed, and no comet had previously been recorded along its path. None of these facts proved that it was anything _other_ than a comet, but the combination of all three plus the timing of its appearance had caused it to receive intermittent attention in the days since its detection.

For her part, Schiffer thought they were jumping at ghosts.

There was a _click_ from the ship's intercom speaker. _"Bridge, engine room,"_ said the voice of Major Gansky, the _Lafayette_'s chief engineer. _"Red light's back on the No. 3 missiles; we could use Major Schiffer back again."_

Merceau managed to shake his head and nod his assent to Schiffer at the same time — a trick she had always wanted to learn from him. "I would like this to stop happening soon, Major," he said as Schiffer waved over her designated relief officer, Lieutenant Neveu, to assume her station.

"_You and I both, sir."_

Schiffer keyed open the bridge's rear hatch and made her way down the corridor of the _Lafayette_'s Alpha section, the bulbous "head" of the vessel. At the rear, she entered the access code to open the airlock doors leading into the connecting neck, chomping at air for a second over the slight pressure difference.

When she left the Alpha section, she also left the range of the ship's artificial gravity generator, so she took hold of the guardrail that freefall turned into a fireman's pole she expertly hauled herself along to the airlock for the Beta, or drive section.

The Beta airlock restored pressure to the norm for the crew section; but since the drive section contained nothing but the engine room and a lot of heavy equipment, no one had bothered with gravity. As soon as Schiffer had floated through the airlock, she took hold of one of the rungs built into the wall and planted the slightly magnetic soles of her boots on what was the _Lafayette's_ portside bulkhead, then searched through the crowd of orange radiation suits for the chief engineer. "Where's Gansky?" she asked.

Jenner, the one officer she could find, pointed aft and looked like he'd been about to speak before she heard Gansky's voice coming from that direction. "Katie?" it asked. "Get up here, will you?"

Schiffer smiled and pushed off, gliding through the center of the room and grabbing another handbar to come to a rest by the thick viewpane looking out over the _Lafayette_'s massive fusion reactor. "Victor?" she called into one of the access tubes that led downward at an angle from the side of the room.

"Yeah yeah," said the voice. "Come on already!"

She flipped over to plant her feet on the ceiling, down became up, and she pushed off into the access tube. After about four meters, it led her to a room dominated by a single bank of consoles, with a very heavy hatch at the far end. This was where she found Gansky, who was looking over the console and muttering to himself in Ukrainian.

"Victor, how can the tube have possibly failed _again_?" she asked.

"The tube is fine," said Gansky. "The computer is not. It refuses to interface with the safety box."

Schiffer blinked, floating up to look over his shoulder at the display. "How can it not interface?"

"There is no explanation that makes sense," Gansky replied. "It must be a cable that's come loose."

"But how can that have happened?" asked Schiffer.

"It can't," said Gansky. "I said it didn't make sense." He slipped a keycard into a wall slot by the hatch and entered an access code. Schiffer removed her own keycard from the chest pocket of her coveralls and did the same; the hatch slid open, and they passed through a very cramped airlock into a larger but similarly cramped room that was dominated by one-quarter of the _Lafayette_'s missile armament.

Schiffer followed him to an access panel toward the fore of the room. "...It couldn't be sabotage, could it?" she asked.

Gansky gave her an incredulous look. "You know how hard it is to get into this room, much less pry open the box and tinker around with it. How can this possibly be sabotaged?"

He keyed in another access code and slid open the panel, which was about ten centimeters thick. Beyond was the red box that served as the go-between for the ship's computer and the nuclear warheads on the missiles; it alone recognized the access codes that allowed the warheads to be armed. There were three cables leading from the box – a low-yield power tap that supplemented the box's battery, a data cable linking it to the ship's computer, and another that fed out to the missiles themselves. When he shined his penlight on the power tap, they saw that the notch where it connected to the feeder for the main line was blackened in a away that it shouldn't be.

"Oh, what in the —" Gansky unplugged the power tap, and inspected both ends, shaking his head. "Beautiful. This is just perfect."

"What?" asked Schiffer.

"The boxes use a different voltage than the ship's power," said Gansky, "so this cable is supposed to be a converter. Except in converting the power, it seems to have burned itself out. Must have happened during the power surge." He flipped over the cable, showing her the small inscription reading **MADE AT UTOPIA COLONY**. "This is what I've been talking about — you Martians can't make anything with decent quality; I have no idea how you got the Space Force to buy your junk."

"Hey," said Schiffer. "We've only been a colony for fifty-five years; I think we're making good progress."

"Hmph." Gansky produced his intraship radio. "Jenner, I need a new C-type power cable in Missile Bay 3. One that was made on _Earth_, please."

"You need my help for anything else?" Schiffer asked. Gansky waved her away, and she pushed off back towards the airlock.

Just as Schiffer was passing through the airlock back into the missile bay's access room, the master alarm began to blare and Barne's voice came shouting through the intercom. _"Battle stations, battle stations, all hands to battle stations! Perimeter alert for multiple bogeys — this is not a drill!"_

She acted almost on reflex, torpedoing herself up the access tube and back to the engine room. "Make a hole!" she demanded of the engineers as she shot back to the airlock, which frustratingly didn't open any faster despite the alert.

It took another thirty seconds for her to make it back to the bridge. "Sir?" she asked Merceau as she retook her seat, strapping herself in this time with the safety harness.

"It seems we were watching the wrong horse," said the colonel.

Schiffer checked her display screen and saw what he meant. A cluster of objects had appeared from the vicinity of Saturn's south pole, and were now accelerating towards the fleet that hadn't been deployed to deal with an attack from their direction.

"They must have been on silent running, using the magnetic field to hide their approach," said Ferez, in the unmistakable tone of someone kicking himself for not having figured this out when it would have mattered.

"But how'd they _get_ to the polar region in the first place without our detection?" Schiffer asked. Her mind went back to the warning they had received from Eris days earlier, and she felt like kicking herself as well — but there wasn't time for that now.

The bridge settled into its new rhythm. Barne was calling out reports from the other vessels in the _Lafayette_'s task group as they redeployed to face the incoming bogeys, and Sarbonne was reorienting the ship itself. Neveu had already flipped the master control switch to override the drones' flight plans, and they were racing to form a buffer between the bogeys and the fleet; Schiffer didn't have anything to do at the moment besides watch the screen.

"No response from bogeys to our challenges, sir," said Barne.

"They've reached combat speed," said Ferez. "No ID; we're still too far off for a visual."

"Where is the _Ark Royal_?" asked Merceau.

"She signals they're en route, but ETA is 3.2 hours," Barne reported.

"Hmm," said Merceau. "Well, if we have to wait that long for support, I'd sooner win the fight by ourselves."

Schiffer smiled. "Yes, sir."

Then a new, red dot appeared on her screen near the yellow cluster indicating the bogeys.

"Incoming!" Ferez shouted. "Low mass, high acceleration — it's gotta be a missile!"

"Radiological?" asked Merceau.

"Checking..." Ferez's voice was a little more trained than Schiffer would like to hear. "—Confirmed; they're nuking us!"

Merceau nodded to Schiffer. "Major, interdict that if you please."

"Yes, sir." Schiffer hit the hotkey for Drone Three, which was closest to the approaching missile, and directed it to fire one of its stock of antimissiles in response. A smaller blue dot immediately appeared, racing towards the small red one. "Interdictor deployed. Contact in thirty seconds, mark."

And then there was nothing to do but watch the screen as the dots converged. It had been said of wars in previous centuries that combat tours juxtaposed long stretches of mind-numbing boredom with brief flashes of pulse-pounding terror; battles in space, however, seemed to have given rise to the trick of pulse-pounding boredom.

"Ten seconds," she called out. "Five. Four. Th —" Both dots disappeared, as did all the now-red dots representing the approaching bandits. A second later, a brilliant light came searing through the viewports at the fore of the bridge, and the rest of her display was lost to static. "...Oh, dammit."

"Massive detonation," reported Ferez. "One-twenty to one-thirty megatons; looks like a Class Four."

"What the hell was _that_ for?" demanded Sarbonne.

"EM," replied Ferez. "They just blinded our sensors for the next few minutes."

"Comm is out too," said Barne.

"Yeah, but theirs too, right?" asked Sarbonne. "And they'll have to fly straight through the radiation to get to us."

"They won't fly through it," said Schiffer. "They'll _fire_ through it. We've probably already got more incoming; they'll fly around the rad zone, probably slingshot by Titan."

Merceau nodded. "Mr. Sarbonne, full reverse, then move us into lower orbit. Mr. Barne, use running lights until radio becomes available; order the group to do the same."

Schiffer, for her part, tried to reestablish contact with the drones, which would be running off their internal AI programming until she did. Even though she knew what the Romulans were doing, it all came down to how quickly they could spot, target and interdict their missiles. And she could have felt better about their chances.

She could feel the ship moving around her as Sarbonne maneuvered, and Titan swung into view through the viewport. They were positioned on the night side of the moon, so it was visible only as a wide arc cut out of Saturn which lay beyond. Somewhere down under the cloud cover was Zubrin Colony, which would be under total blackout now and whose nearly fifty thousand residents had been stockpiling water and oxygen ever since the system alert had been called. The colony's shielding would be more than enough to handle the radiation from orbital nuclear detonations, and the Romulans so far hadn't shown much interest in colonies beyond destroying their planetary defenses, but it didn't diminish the reality that had arrived with the Romulans' missile blast: After a century of calm, war had just returned to the Sol system.

On her tactical screen, the ships in the _Lafayette_'s own task group were reappearing as the computer uplinks broke through the bomb's interference. Their task group's second cruiser, the _Sun Yatsen_, was further ahead, flanked by two destroyers she guessed to be the _Jeremiah O'Brien_ and _Rodger Young_. Ahead of them were three drones, all from the _Sun Yatsen_, and behind were a handful of frigates. The _Lafayette_ was a few hundred kilometers farther back, and its drones still weren't responding to her control.

"Looks like Colonel Lin is taking point on this one," she said, reporting the data to Merceau.

"So long as she saves a few for us," he replied. "Why don't we try to organize some sort of formation?"

Schiffer nodded, and was just starting to plot one out when the second wave of missiles appeared. Her screen picked up the new targets and the antimissiles deployed by the _Sun Yatsen_'s drones at about the same time; she didn't know how many of the missiles were successfully interdicted; at least one of them went off and washed out that part of her map again. A good half-dozen missiles, however, bypassed the _Sun Yatsen_ and her drones, heading straight for the _Lafayette_'s cluster of ships.

"Incoming!" Ferez warned.

"Major?" Merceau asked Ferez.

"Antimissiles are away," Schiffer assured him, as her screen confirmed launches from two of their drones and the _Lafayette_ herself. "This could be close, though. Impact in fourteen seconds mark."

Merceau keyed the intercom. "All decks, brace for impact."

One of the antimissiles' signatures converged with that of one of the incoming missiles, and both disappeared. A second later, another missile suffered the same fate. "Scratch two missiles," she said, as another antimissile struck home. "Now three. Four. Impact in five seconds mark. Scratch five."

A blast shield had descended over the viewports when Merceau had sounded to brace for impact, and the _Lafayette_'s hull was fully polarized to deflect energy bursts; but Schiffer felt the bridge lurch, saw the displays flicker and the main lights go out as every hair on her body stood on end, and she knew the last missile had gone off. It must have been on a proximity detonator, since the ship couldn't possibly have survived a direct hit; but even so the blast gave her the worst ride she'd experienced yet in twelve years of space duty. The shaking kept up for a good fifteen seconds, before the ship settled into an almost eerie calm; and it took this long for Schiffer to realize that her stomach was trying to leap out of her throat because the artificial gravity had failed, not just because of her heart rate.

"All stations, report," commanded Merceau authoritatively, in a clear attempt to will the situation into being under control.

Schiffer scanned over the status display, which was the only one showing something other than an error message anyway. "Red lights on tubes One and Two," she reported. "Could be bad sensors; I've flagged the engine room. Tubes Three and Four show green, but targeting sensors and tactical map are down, no signal from drones."

Tubes One and Two were what she focused on as the other stations ticked off their status reports. If they weren't functioning, the ship had access to only half its missile arsenal – assuming nothing else was wrong with Bay Three. Not that it mattered so long as they had no idea what they were shooting at.

"Secondary sensors are coming online," said Ferez, as fuzzy pictures began to re-emerge on Schiffer's tactical plot. "Getting multiple radiological spikes at mid-range, toward the _Sun Yatsen_."

"Communications?"

"Just coming back," said Barne. "Getting transponders from all ships but the _Grozny_ and _Defiant_."

"Those would've been the two closest to the blast aside from us," said Schiffer. Both ships were frigates; given the pounding the _Lafayette_ had taken, odds were bad for their still being in the fight.

"Main sensors are reset," said Ferez.

Merceau nodded. "Find the enemy, please."

The lights for Tubes One and Two switched from red to green. "All missile tubes show clear," she said.

"Ready One through Three targeting best approximation of Romulan fleet," said Merceau. "Fire two Vipers each at first opportunity. Mr. Barne, instruct all other ships to spread out, weapons free."

With the nuclear detonations continuing to play hell with the radar, Schiffer couldn't use the tactical display to get any more than a guess as to where the Romulans were. That left the ship's telescopes, which were unfortunately also of limited use as the battle was taking place in Titan's shadow. Still, ships would at least show up as hotspots on infrared, and photic sonar technology had advanced considerably in recent years. All she needed was enough to let the missiles' automatic targeting kick in, and this she found in a cluster of a half-dozen vessels in wide formation approaching a considerably less organized group of similar size; she guessed the latter to be that led by the _Sun Yatsen_.

"Colonel, it looks like the Romulans have split up," she said. "I've only got a half-dozen confirmed contacts."

"Understood," said Merceau. "Keep Tube Three in reserve."

Schiffer complied, hesitantly. "Sir, I think this is a pincer move; they're trying to get our forces trapped in low orbit and surrounded by rad zones; the rest of their force is taking the long way around that first blast so we won't detect them until we're sitting right under it and they're shooting more nukes up our tailpipes."

Merceau nodded, with a look that said he'd had this thought too. "They've already divided our force," he said. "I won't abandon Colonel Lin, and the best we can do is take out one end of their pincers before the other is in place."

"Yes, sir." Schiffer directed the four missiles to be fired on a path that would take them well clear of all Earth ships on the grid. "Firing now," she said, flipping up the first four missile safeties and then the actual switches, ending with the red one that actually launched the missiles.

Each tube was able to hold two Viper missiles or a single, larger Banshee; both Vipers could be launched in rapid succession, so all four missiles had been deployed within five seconds. Five seconds after they did, their auto-targeting system came online, under the guidance of their uplink to the ship's computer and the programming input to them prior to launch; after another five seconds, when the missiles were well away from the _Lafayette_ and tracking in on their targets, the warheads came online.

"Missiles are tracking," she reported. "Twenty seconds to target."

"I've lost the _Sun Yatsen_'s transponder!" called Barne.

"More detonations coming from that area," said Ferez. "Could just be interference."

"Ten seconds to target," said Schiffer. "Two missiles destroyed by countermeasures. Five seconds. Four. Three missiles down. Two. One." A new point of artificial sunlight appeared on the visual plot, and the corresponding patch of the tactical map became scrambled again. "Detonation confirmed."

Merceau nodded. "Now we're getting somewhere."

Then a cluster of new red lights appeared on her screen above the _Lafayette_'s group. "Incoming!" she called. "Dorsal approach, a dozen or more!"

"Countermeasures," said Merceau; Schiffer was already clearing all the ship's antimissile tubes. "Brace for impact."

"Impact in ten seconds mark," The destroyers and frigates that had formed on the _Lafayette_ added countermeasures as well, as the approaching missiles speared straight into the heart of their formation. "Down to eight missiles. Now six. Five seconds. Five missiles. Three seconds. Two — four missiles." She tightly gripped the straps of her seat harness, crossing herself and closing her eyes.

The first impact was nothing compared with this. The deck dropped out from under her, shaking like an aircraft passing through a hurricane, and even the emergency lights went out. Schiffer heard the crackle and buzz as the hull plating was overwhelmed, and saw the telltale blue flash of energy passing through her eyelids, skin and bones, all but marking her for death.

It was strange, she thought as the shaking died down — she didn't_ feel_ irradiated. But her training had prepared her as much as was possible for this, and she knew it was her duty to keep working for as long as she could, even if she knew she'd be dead within a week no matter how the battle played out.

Judging by the silence that hung over the bridge for a dreadful moment after the blast, she wasn't the only one who was struggling with the thought. "...Well, then," said Merceau finally, voice a bit hollower than before. "Status report, please?"

The emergency lights were finally coming back online, but even when her terminal reinitialized it showed her nothing but static and error messages. "I've got nothing," she said.

"Here either," said Ferez.

"Dead," agreed Sarbonne.

"There must be wire damage in the neck," said Neveu from the damage control station. "This station's blank; I'll have to go back."

"No, assume Tactical." Merceau nodded to Schiffer. "Major, you go." Schiffer frowned but nodded, unfastening her safety harness and guiding herself out of the chair. "Major? You know what to do." He produced a wafer crystal, laser-printed with machine code. "Just keep us in the fight. And make sure we go out with a bang."

Wordlessly, Schiffer saluted and made her way off the bridge.

She didn't need to go farther than the ship's neck to find Gansky and the engineers, who already had an access wall panel open at either end of the connecting section and were yanking out pulse-wire cable. "If you want to know about the missiles, the tubes are fine," the chief engineer told her as he payed out a line of replacement cable. "If only the electronics were so well armored."

"How long?" she asked.

"Ten, twenty minutes, assuming the ports aren't corrupted."

Schiffer shook her head. "I really don't think we have that. I need you to come with me, Victor. We have to do a manual launch."

Gansky frowned at her, but knew her expression well enough not to waste time. "Here," he said to another engineer, handing over the wire. "Bridge it there and there, and wait for the third link before running a backup." Clapping the engineer on the shoulder, he pushed off with Schiffer towards the drive section airlock. "So how'd we all die?" he asked as he keyed in his entry code.

Schiffer couldn't help a faint smile at his tone. "The Romulans set off a Class-Four nuke right off the bat to mess with our sensors. We figured they were go around it, and some of them did, but while they filled the sky with nukes, they fired one spread straight through the first rad zone. Probably on delayed ignition, so we didn't see them until they were raining down on us."

Gansky nodded; they were at the rear of the engine room now, by the access tubes that led to the missile bays. "Four, right?"

She nodded and followed him down into the control room. "Wait," she said as he went to key open the access hatch for the bay itself. "Move one of the 100s into a holding rack."

Gansky frowned, but didn't need an explanation. As Schiffer picked up a portable terminal from the wall and opened the hatch, he instructed the bay's robot maintenance arm to drag one of the 100-megaton Banshee warheads into a special holding brace designed for maintenance.

"Thanks," said Schiffer, moving to hover before the two lower-yield missiles that were currently loaded in the bay's pre-launch chamber. "Let's go with a Banshee MIRV 6."

"Just a minute," called Gansky from the control room. The two missiles slid backwards up the feeder groove, and were replaced by a single, larger one. Schiffer took the universal screwdriver from her sleeve pocket and removed the panel that covered this missile's data port, inserted the data wafer Merceau had given her and typed in the code that appeared in hologram within the crystal when the port lit up. Then she plugged in the portable terminal, which displayed the settings for the missile's rudimentary guidance system. After disconnecting the missile computer from the ship's mainframe, she made sure it was programmed with the IFF transponders for all Earth ships, then instructed it to target the general direction of the Romulan fleet. At that point, four of the missile's six warheads would split off to seek targets and detonate on proximity; the two larger warheads would split apart slightly later, exploding immediately before impact.

"All right, it's good," she said, inputting one final code to re-lock the missile before disconnecting her equipment, replacing the access panel and guiding herself over to the other warhead. This one she'd have to set for a timed detonation, and as soon as she'd accessed the warhead, she'd call the bridge and ask Merceau how long.

"Katie?" Gansky called. "Did you verify the inputs on the MIRV 6?"

Schiffer frowned. "Of course I did. Why?"

Gansky didn't answer her right away, but she heard him speaking through the intercom, and another man's voice replied. A moment later, he emerged through the hatch, looking grim.

"What's going on?" she asked him.

"I checked the missile from the master console, just in case," he said. "It still reads as slaved into the mainframe. Your instructions don't register."

Schiffer frowned, looking back at the missile. "I know I de-linked it," she said, starting back toward the missile anyway.

"Well, the only thing I can think of is if the final execution code was incorrect," Gansky suggested.

"I read the code straight off the crystal," said Schiffer, reopening the access panel. "Just like all the others."

"Then the missile was tampered with," said Gansky.

It took a second for Schiffer to realize what he was saying. "The missile's been sabotaged?"

Gansky nodded. "So that when it launches, the warheads won't arm."

Schiffer shook her head. "Okay, even assuming it was _possible_ to get in here and tamper with one of these missiles, that's about the stupidest kind of sabotage imaginable. If the auto-fire system were still running, we could still just arm the missile normally."

"But it _isn't_ running," said Gansky. "This is the kind of tampering we'd almost never detect, but it's left the missile completely useless."

That only makes sense if someone _knew_ we were going to lose fire control," said Schiffer.

"It's the only explanation," said Gansky. "When we last tested the missiles a week ago, they were all fine. Stuff like this doesn't just break."

"It's—" Schiffer dismissed the thought. Sabotage on a battlecruiser was a scenario too ridiculous to postulate; and sneaky bastards though the Romulans were, there'd never been a single report of infiltration during the course of the war. She _had_ to dismiss the thought. "There's no time here for conspiracy theories," she said. "Can you fix the missile?"

"Not a chance," Gansky said. "But I can shunt the firing computer through the local control station and let us control it that way." Schiffer nodded, and he started back towards the access hatch.

He was about halfway there when he was grabbed by a man in a black jumpsuit who had appeared out of thin air just an instant earlier.

"Victor!" Schiffer exclaimed, launching herself toward him. The assailant moved quickly, too; grabbing Gansky's neck, he twisted hard in a move that was probably supposed to snap it. Gansky, however, was squirming and managed to absorb the blow; spinning so that he was oriented perpendicular to the attacker, he planted his feet on one of the supports for the missile rack and propelled both of them into the wall.

The attacker pushed Gansky back, sending him flying back into the missile rack with an inhuman level of force, then produced a slim, pistol-shaped device that Schiffer guessed was a weapon by the way he aimed it at Gansky's chest. She reached him before he could fire, grabbing his weapon arm and pulling him into a wrestling hold, with one leg hooked around his and a knee to his back.

It was during this move that Schiffer got a look at the man's face: his hair, while not long by terrestrial standards, was swirling about in the null-gravity and blocking a clear view, but she could see an upswept eyebrow and caught a glimpse of the point on one of his ears. A Vulcan. While their technological abilities, murky as they were, offered as good an explanation for his sudden appearance as any other she should think of, she had absolutely no idea why a Vulcan would be trying to beat them up or sabotage the ship.

More immediately important, however, was that she couldn't get a good hold on his free arm; and though they spun around uselessly for a moment, she felt him shaking free. She made a move to disarm him before he quite could, but he managed to direct the weapon at the 100-megaton Banshee warhead and fire a yellow-white beam that completely enveloped the nuclear device. A second later, the warhead had simply vanished.

"What the hell...?" Schiffer breathed. If the Vulcans had weapons like _that_, she definitely thought she would have heard about it.

The attacker used her confusion to shake completely free, and push her away. The force of the move sent him flying back towards the access hatch as well, but he seemed less concerned about that than he was with aiming the vaporizer ray at Schiffer's chest.

This time it was Gansky who slammed into him at the last second, driving an elbow into the side of his head and slamming the weapon-hand into the bulkhead, causing the Vulcan reflexively to let go. Rather than attempting to recover the weapon, however, he threw off Gansky's hand and put both of his own at the engineer's throat, snarling in a way Schiffer had never seen a Vulcan do. She caught a grip and propelled herself back into the fight, but knew she'd be too late to save Gansky's neck from being crushed by the assault.

An instant later, a blue-white arc of electricity shot from the entrance to strike the Vulcan at the base of his neck, and a jolt ran through his body; Gansky shook free of his grip as the stunned attacker floated freely by the wall.

"You all right?" demanded Sergeant Kendrick, who was just now crawling through the hatch with taser in hand. "The hell did this guy come from?"

"No idea," said Schiffer, snatching the vaporizer weapon out of the air. She tasted blood in her mouth, but wasn't sure if that was from the fighting or the radiation. "I like your timing, Sargeant."

"Came as soon as Major Gansky called about the missile," said Kendrick. "Would've found a way to come quicker if I'd known about _him_."

"He showed up right after I called," said Gansky. "Just appeared out of thin air."

"Like from a transporter beam?" Kendrick took out a piece of cuff-rope from his belt and secured the attacker's hands.

"Like in an eyeblink," said Schiffer. She held up the weapon. "And with this thing, he completely vaporized a missile."

Kendrick gave her a look. "You're just making this up now."

"I'm completely ser —" Schiffer trailed off as a flash of blue-green light engulfed the Vulcan, who was gone a second later.

For a moment, everyone just stared. "...All right, _that_ was a transporter beam," said Gansky.

"No way," said Schiffer. It lasted, what, four seconds? And who the hell —"

This time it was the room shaking that cut her off, and she felt the telltale charge of yet another close nuclear detonation. Her hand tightened around the nearest handhold, but the magnetism in her boots wasn't strong enough to keep them planted to the wall. The room spun around her, blurring and jumping as if she were seeing it in double vision. Gansky and Kendrick looked equally dazed.

Then pain exploded somewhere behind her eyes, and she instinctively released the handhold to clutch both sides of her head. The room still seemed to be shaking, but she didn't feel like she was moving; and now Gansky and Kendrick were shaking as well — but less violently, and not in sync with the room. And then she caught a glimpse of their Vulcan attacker, as if his departure had just been undone.

"_What the hell?"_ she heard herself ask; and while the question certainly applied, she hadn't spoken. The Vulcan's image was jumping around the room, firing his vaporizer beam one instant, then floating dazed by the hatch, then completely gone, then grappling with a duplicate image of Gansky.

"—_control it that way"_ said Gansky's voice; the room had multiplied, and she was seeing it from a half-dozen angles at once. She couldn't breathe, and felt blood draining from her hands; she gasped, coughed, but was swallowing her own breath.

"— _know I de-linked it"_

"_tampered with —"_

"_blinded our sensors for the next few minutes"_

Schiffer closed her eyes, but they felt like she handn't, and the images kept coming, increasingly blurred but getting brighter, like the world was collapsing around her while tearing itself apart.

"_Here's to the _Lafayette_ —"_

"— _no response to our challenges"_

"_is the United Earth Ship _Lafayette_. You have entered —"_

"— _all force and no style"_

"_it just doesn't feel right"_

It was all dissolving into a starfield in negative light, black dots in a sea of blinding whiteness. She was burning, and freezing, and felt nothing at all, as if she weren't really in her body anymore, and her body was everywhere at once.

"_verify the inputs —"_

"— _Birdies made it as a Trojan horse"_

"— _have it be too easy. right, Katie?"_

The voices were crowding in, shouting and crying and whispering and everything else; she could only make out a few through the din, as they and the whiteness overrode every instinct and thought she might have.

"_got the Space Force to buy **Major?** your junk"_

"_from the master control **Dead**, just in case **saves a few for us**_

_completely useless —_

_**always looking back** Massive detonation **what maybe could have been**_

"_the rest is a matter of details."_

A whining noise was rising to override the voices, and the searing whiteness dissolved into a tunnel of colors and shapes that couldn't exist but she couldn't escape. Schiffer felt whatever was left of her senses disappear, as this new world swallowed her whole.

– –

She didn't feel herself falling until she was already lying on her back, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. She felt herself fall gently onto a solid platform as she saw another form lying next to her, and saw the form before she turned her head to look at him. She was still seeing two things at once — or maybe everything at once, or the same thing twice. All she knew was she was very confused.

A figure stood over her. A man. She saw him hold a thin bracelet-like device over her, then saw him remove it from being attached to his sleeve. "poisoning. Chronotisis, and radiation acute" he said before he spoke, then looked at the ceiling while looking over her. "right now. Proxima, get in stasis them"

"...What...?" she managed, before the whine returned and she felt herself dissolve as the world disappeared again.


	2. Out of Time

"We've lost it!"

The strain in Commander Miara Valla's voice went unnoticed; given the situation, it was remarkably level. On the three-dimensional display that occupied the foremost section of the bridge's lower level, the once tightly linear graph was fraying apart from the the point marking the Battle of Titan. It was an almost textbook divergence.

"Major variance!" called Ensign Baraka — unnecessarily, as the event was plainly visible to all the half-dozen occupants of the vessel's control center. "Reading mean divergence upwards of thirty percent!"

"Can you still trace the incursion?" Captain Julerin asked, as he scanned over all the new data that was coming through from the ship's sensors.

"I'm trying," said Valla. "But it's going to take a while to sort through the variance."

"Mr. Juma," said Julerin, looking to his chief of operations. "Do we have a while?"

"I'm scanning now," said Commander Juma from the Operations station. "But I seriously doubt it."

Julerin nodded. The tentacles that framed his nasal gill curled inward, a nervous tic he'd never rid himself of. "Proxima," he asked. "What's the status of the three we recovered?"

"For the moment, they're alive," said Proxima, appearing next to him. "In addition to the standard effects of chronotosis, their bodies absorbed lethal levels of nuclear radiation during the battle — which complicates their treatment." Then she cocked her head, frowning as if hearing something. "I'm being scanned."

"What's the source?" Julerin asked.

"Large vessel," said Juma, "approaching from three light-hours, arc eighteen by four."

"Can you identify it?"

"That's not necessary," said Proxima. "They're identifying themselves. I'm being instructed to stand down, and submit to the Romulan Galactic Empire."

The bridge was silent for a moment. "...Well," said Juma finally. "That's quite a variance."

Julerin nodded solemnly. "Red alert, please."

—

Schiffer awoke to a shooting pain in her left arm, as it felt like her heart was exploding. She gasped for air, but found she couldn't breathe either; her muscles convulsed, but she couldn't move.

She was lying on her back in thin air inside a tube as pulsing lights swirled around her running backwards, forward and standing still, and through the pounding headache she felt a tremendous sense of vertigo. Sounds pounded against her skull that didn't mean anything but piled on one after another for a cacophony not unlike standing behind an active rocket — which she thought would probably not feel much worse either. She coughed; blood shot out of her mouth, and she saw it dissolve.

She was shaking violently; it felt as if her limbs wanted to fly off, and only the invisible restraint was holding her together, with a weight that pressed down on her with ever stronger force. Spots appeared in her vision, then morphed into the Lafayette, or the Valles Marineris, or her first bike, her last bike, her cat, that damn history professor who'd convinced her to join the Space Force. Then the images washed away as the weight seemed to penetrate her skin, compressing her bones and organs and she wondered that she'd thought her heart was being crushed before. Her eyesight went the way of her hearing; she saw everything but comprehended nothing; and then she saw, heard and felt nothing at all.

She was lying on a soft, flat surface, with an unfamiliar ceiling above, and it took her a second to realize she felt normal again. She held a hand up in front of her eyes to make sure it was still there, then felt the side of her face to make sure it was too. She thought she felt her fingers touch her face a second or two before they actually did, however.

As she was checking her pulse, she looked off to her left and saw a coffin-sized pod sticking out of a wall about two meters away; a glowing image in the shape of a human body hovered in the air above it, accompanied by some glowing text she couldn't read, and someone stood with his back to her examining it. Then the figure lay his hand on a glowing panel on the side of the pod, and the top half of it disappeared, revealing a bed on which Sergeant Kendrick lay.

The figure said something to her, but it all sounded jumbled, like he was speaking backwards. She frowned, felt a ringing in her ears. The figure — an Andorian, she saw, clad in a predominately teal jumpsuit with a diagonal white section that included the whole right sleeve — reached out to assist her to her feet, and said something to another figure behind her. A jumble of different voices had arisen all around her, and none of them made sense.

"What's going on?" she asked. Or she mouthed the words; what came out sounded like gibberish and wasn't in sync with the movement of her lips. She looked around and saw what had to be some sort of hospital; it was too spacious to be on a spacecraft, with a good three meters between the beds and virtually no freestanding equipment. There were about a half-dozen aliens present, but no two of them seemed to belong to the same species. They did all seem to be in a hurry, and the pulsing red lights on the wall didn't exactly feel reassuring.

She saw and then felt something be applied to her neck, but couldn't be sure who was responsible before she was overcome with a splitting headache. She felt two pairs of hands guiding her somewhere, but couldn't even control her body enough to open her eyes, and so had no idea where they went.

The hands guided her into something soft that felt like an easy chair, as the headache subsided and a strange numbness passed through her body from head to toe. She opened her eyes, and saw herself in a totally different room. This one felt a bit like a hotel lobby, minus the front desk; there were chairs, coffee tables (lit from the inside; it wasn't apparent how), even plants. There didn't seem to be any doors, however. Or any indication of how she could have got there from the hospital.Or windows, for that matter.

Kendrick and Gansky were seated in chairs nearby, looking about the way she felt. The Andorian and a couple of the other aliens were also in the room, watching them; another, who looked a bit like a Zakdorn except for the golden skin and wore a jumpsuit identical to the Andorian's, had its (her?) hand to a glowing node on the wall that Schiffer would have guessed was a light fixture.

"Can you understand me now?" asked the Andorian. "How are you feeling?"

Schiffer blinked. This time, she really did feel better; the headache was almost gone, and the numbness had passed. She felt heavier than she had under the Lafayette's three-quarter gravity, and something else felt odd that she couldn't quite identify; but she was fairly sure the gravity itself was the problem, not her.

"Yeah," she said, relieved to hear herself making sense. "Fine. Where am I?"

"You're perfectly safe," said the Andorian. "You were suffering from acute chronotosis — your body was out of temporal sync with itself. We had to revive you before the process had completely reverted, which is why you felt the lingering effects. You also had extreme exposure to nuclear radiation, and may have felt the effects from that during the treatment; but we've corrected that as well."

"Um...," said Schiffer, trying to take all that in. "You...what?" she asked, shaking her head.

"Did you say you cured our radiation poisoning?" asked Gansky, leaning forward in his chair.

"Where are we?" asked Kendrick. "Is this an Andorian ship?"

"Can't be a ship," said Gansky. "We're on a planet somewhere. How long were we unconscious?"

"And how did we get here?" asked Schiffer.

"Doctor?" That was the gold Zakdorn, who was still standing by the glowing whatever-it-was.

The Andorian looked over, then back to Schiffer and the others. "Excuse me," he said, and moved to join the other jumpsuited aliens, who were gathered around the glowing thing.

"—Hey!" said Schiffer, standing. She felt a brief sense of vertigo as she did — not quite dizziness, but enough to stop her for a second. "What's going on?"

The Andorian glanced back at them; Kendrick and Gansky were on their feet as well. "We're under attack," he said.

"What?" asked Schiffer. She was with the group of aliens now. At the center of the group, a three-dimensional display was hovering in midair. In it were two definite objects that had to be ships; one looked vaguely like a boomerang with a flat fuselage sticking out the front, while the other was larger and looked like someone's stylized representation of a great bird. There were a bunch of other objects and characters that Schiffer couldn't understand, mostly around the boomerang-ship, and both were surrounded by a maze of glowing lines whose colors kept changing in ways that were probably significant.

"Proxima?" asked the Andorian.

"What?" repeated Schiffer.

"The attacking vessel identifies itself as the Romulan warbird D'Ralex," came a voice from next to Schiffer. She jumped, looking beside her to see a woman with a dark red version of the jumpsuit that featured a navy blue sleeve, with gray eyes, well-tanned skin and an American Indian look that couldn't account for the freckles running down either side of her face and neck — and who Schiffer was certain hadn't been in the room a second earlier.

"What the—" she asked, as she tried to absorb the development. "How did you...Romulan?" She glanced back at the two ships in the display, neither of which looked Romulan.

The newcomer glanced at her. "The D'Ralex demanded our surrender, and opened fire upon our refusal."

"Why are they attacking us?" asked the Andorian.

The newcomer raised her eyebrows. "It seems likely that in this variance, such behavior is typical."

Schiffer glanced from the newcomer to the two ships circling each other, to Gansky and Kendrick. "Any idea what she's talking about?" she asked.

"That one has to be the Romulan," said Kendrick, pointing to the bird-like one.

"Romulan ships don't look like that," Schiffer protested. "Nobody's ships look like that."

Kendrick shrugged. "Sure looks like something the Birdies would make."

"Incredibly impractical design," declared Gansky. "Both of them. They can't be warships."

The lines around the boomerang-ship were turning increasingly red. "Why aren't we disengaging?" asked a blue alien who wasn't an Andorian.

"We're still trying to trace the incursion," said the woman. "If we slip, that won't be possible."

"The Romulans seem to be outpowering us," said the Andorian urgently.

The woman gave him a flat look. "Captain Julerin is aware of that."

"If those are the Romulans..." Kendrick was frowning. "This can't be Titan; where's our fleet?"

"Where's their fleet?" asked Schiffer. "Where are we?"

The room shuddered, and the woman in red flickered. Schiffer was too surprised to realize at first that the display had done so as well.

"My subspace field is destabilizing," said the woman. "You may be disconnected."

"What does that mean?" asked Gansky.

"How much longer can we hold this position?" asked the Andorian.

"If the engagement continues as it has so far," said the woman, "it's likely that—"

She disappeared. The display flickered and went out as well. A soft tone that could only be an alarm sounded, and the red lighting on the walls turned blue.

"What just happened?" asked Schiffer.

"Where did she go?" asked Kendrick, frowning at the spot where the woman had been.

The aliens all were looking at each other with what had to be concern. "We have another problem," the Andorian said.

—

"Why can't we ever have a friendly variance?" Commander Juma asked rhetorically as he scanned over the damage report.

"I've lost the shell modules," said Proxima. "Subspace field is below minimal, and I don't think my shields can take much more of this level of firepower."

The holographic status image that hovered in front of Julerin's console showed the weapons fire playing between the two ships. Both craft's block shielding prevented the shots from scoring any actual damage; but the shields were being steadily weakened by the onslaught. And the Romulan shields were weakening far more slowly.

"Miara?" asked Julerin, "how much longer do you need?"

"That ship is using some sort of chroniton plasma weapon," said Commander Valla. "It's interfering with our scans; I'm no closer than I was when they engaged us." She glanced over at Julerin.

The ship shook. "Singularity blast," said Proxima. My shields are weakening."

Julerin frowned. "Miara, I need a recommendation now."

Valla closed her eyes for a second, then sighed. "Tempus fugit," she said, glancing at the captain. "I think unless we disable that weapon, at this point we might as well disengage."

"Disabling them doesn't really seem like an option we have," said Juma.

The ship rocked again, more violently this time. "My shields are failing," said Proxima matter-of-factly.

Julerin nodded. "Configure for starslip."

—

"Shouldn't they have re-established the link by now?" asked a red-skinned alien. It sounded nervous; Schiffer didn't even know which species it was, and so had no idea if she was reading it properly – it didn't even seem to have a mouth – but then she didn't care that much either.

"They were taking heavy damage," said a gold-skinned alien. "At the rate their shields were failing, they couldn't have survived this long."

"I had no idea you were such a tactical expert, Calo," the Andorian said.

"Hey!" Schiffer exclaimed. "How many times do I have to ask what's going on here?"

The aliens looked at her as if they'd forgotten she was there. "It's complicated," said the Andorian.

"No kidding," said Schiffer. "I've seen the inside of Andorian ships, and this isn't one of them. You tell me you've cured our radiation and our bodies got chrono-time-distorted, and then you show us a fight between Romulans who aren't and a giant boomerang, not to mention the disappearing lady. I'd love to hear a simple explanation for all that, but I'll settle for any."

The Andorian's antennae curled in on themselves for a moment. All the other aliens were just watching. "Ideally, I wouldn't need to explain this to you under these circumstances," he said. "We have other personnel better suited to your situations."

"Our 'situation' is we want answers!" Kendrick snapped.

Schiffer raised a cautioning hand. "Sergeant, I'll handle this." She couldn't really blame him, though. "Tell you what," she said to the Andorian. "Why don't you just start simple? Like, where are we?"

The Andorian hesitated for another second. Schiffer raised her eyebrows expectantly. "You're in a shell module attached to the Federation timeship Proxima." His antennae twitched in their direction, as if he was waiting for their reaction.

But if that was supposed to mean anything to Schiffer, she wasn't seeing it. "Federation?" she asked.

"Timeship?" asked Kendrick.

"Shell module?" asked Gansky.

"Proxima transported you here from your vessel," said the Andorian. "I assume because you were in proximity to the incursion."

"What incursion?" asked Kendrick. "You mean the Romulan attack? What are you talking about?"

"Transported us how?" asked Gansky. "...You don't mean with a translocation beam, do you?"

Now the Andorian looked confused. "If that's what it was called then, yes."

"What?" asked Schiffer, now glancing and Gansky. "Victor, is this guy making sense to you?"

"There's only one way we could have been taken off the Lafayette like that," said Gansky. "Remember how that Vulcan disappeared."

"...You mean, besides magic?" Schiffer asked.

"Matter-energy transport," said Gansky. "It's theoretically possible, but to use it on a living person without a sending unit to dematerialize, and in the middle of a rad zone..."

"—Wait," said Schiffer. "You're not talking about that thing where they take your atoms apart and shoot them across space in a beam of light, are you?"

"It's not a beam of light," said Gansky.

"Whatever," said Schiffer, looking at the Andorian. Her heartbeat was picking up. "Tell me you didn't actually do that."

"Actually, we had to do quite a bit more," said the Andorian.

Schiffer's mouth opened and closed, a few times before she could get any sound out. She was starting to feel sick. "...Oh, God," she said, turning away and looking for someplace where she could throw up if necessary. "—That's why I thought my body was getting turned inside out!" she exclaimed, rounding back on the Andorian. "Because it was! What the hell else did you do to me?"

There was another tone, and the blue lighting became a much warmer off-white. "Proxima?" the Andorian asked.

And the disappearing woman reappeared. "I've disengaged from the battle," she said. "Everyone's fine." She nodded in the direction of Schiffer, Kendrick and Gansky. "I'll manage from here; you can return to your stations."

The Andorian nodded, and turned to leave.

"—Hey," said Schiffer, as the blue jumpsuits started for the wall. "No one's taking us anywhere until..." Her train of thought was briefly interrupted as she saw the Andorian raise his hand to a glowing bar located about shoulder-height on the wall; part of the wall disappeared, and he stepped through the opening into what looked like the hospital again. "...until we get a better explanation here," she finished, as the other aliens followed.

"What part are you having difficulty with?" asked the woman.

"What part am I—" Schiffer shook her head. "All I want to know is where we are, and what you're doing to us."

The woman nodded. "You're in what you'd call the late twenty-ninth century, specifically the Earth year 2894." She hesitated. "After that, the explanation becomes complicated."

Schiffer, Gansky and Kendrick looked at each other, then back at the Andorian. "...What?" asked Schiffer.

"Twenty-eight ninety-four," Kendrick repeated incredulously.

"We're in the future?" Schiffer added.

"We're at a point in time that you would reflexively consider to be the future, yes," said the woman matter-of-factly. "Though naturally it would be more correct to identify this as the present, whereas your accustomed time period is now the past."

Schiffer shook her head. "...Time travel's impossible," she said, raising her hand declaratively. "Everybody knows that."

The other women looked at her cooly. "Both parts of that statement are incorrect."

"The only way to reach the future," Gansky elaborated, "is through relativistic effects — near-light speeds or extreme gravity; you can't use a translocator beam to reach back and snatch someone from seven hundred years ago."

"So what's really going on?" Schiffer asked.

The woman rolled her eyes. "Your emergency code is Foxtrot Kappa Three-Four-Three."

Schiffer blinked. "...What?"

"The Lafayette was your fourth posting aboard a United Earth warship," the woman continued. "Your first, the Jericho, was destroyed by a kinetic mine. Your second, the Nehru, was destroyed three months after you transferred to the Vesta, on which you were seriously irradiated during the Battle of Vega and nearly prohibited from spaceborne duty. Up until you were posted to the Lafayette, you were engaged to—"

"Woah!" Schiffer said, holding up her hand. "How the hell do you know all that?"

"All that information was held in your United Earth Space Force master personnel file, which has since been archived in the Memory database of the United Federation of Planets. I also have access to your duty and personal logs." She glanced at Kendrick and Gansky. "Yours as well."

Schiffer shook her head. "...Who are you?" she asked. "What do you want from us?"

"I am Proxima," said the woman. "And my crew needs your help."

"Proxima," said Gansky, "was the name of the ship."

Proxima looked at him. "Yes."

Before anyone could think of a new tack to try, Proxima glanced back over her shoulder toward the location of the vanishing doorway, a second before it appeared again. Through it was a room entirely different from the medical ward that had been there before. Schiffer saw a huge viewport, beyond which seemed to be a spiral galaxy, before a single figure stepped through the doorway and the wall reappeared.

"Wh...uh..." Schiffer sputtered, glancing at Kendrick and Gansky. "What is that thing?"

"A doorway," Proxima told her. "You step through them to go places."

"Always the diplomat," said the newest newcomer, whom Schiffer had barely noticed through her surprise at the doorway. She looked female, and basically human, with pale skin and a faint bulge on her forehead that came to a point at the bridge of her nose, peaking in a ridge that ran up to disappear in her thick brown hair; another such bulge framed each of her orange eyes, giving her a slightly owlish look. She had the same pale blue jumpsuit as the first group of aliens, but with a navy blue sleeve. "Thank you, Proxima," she said. "I'll take it from here."

The other red-jumpsuit woman nodded, and disappeared.

"Wh..." Schiffer shook her head, and turned to the newest alien. "Okay. What's your story?"

"I'm Commander Miara Valla," she said, extending her hand. No one took it. "I'm Proxima's executive officer."

"Proxima, the timeship from the future," Schiffer clarified.

"Your future, yes," said Valla.

"Oh, don't you start," said Schiffer. "What do you people want from us?"

"I'm sure this is confusing for you," Valla began. "But we brought you here because you were present during a temporal incursion from our time," said Valla. "Because of this, you may be able to assist us in negating that incursion."

"If you guys are really from seven hundred years in the future," said Schiffer, "and you've got all this technology to bring us here, how are we supposed to help?"

"Repairing the timeline is an incredibly delicate task," said Valla, "especially now that it's already been altered. At the moment, we know where and when our history was altered; but we don't know how, nor can we know the best way to correct it. What we'd like you to do is talk to our temporal operations staff, work with them to determine the answers we need."

"What answers do you need, exactly?" Gansky asked.

"We don't know yet," said Valla. "I'm afraid that's why we need you."

"Right," said Schiffer. "So basically, we tell you everything about our ship and where we came from, and just hope you won't turn around and..." She shook her head.

"And what?" asked Valla, frowning.

"I don't know," said Schiffer. "Use it against us. Somehow. You're aliens; what the hell do I know what your plans are?"

Valla nodded. "You don't. There's no proof I can offer you that you won't question, if you're intent on being suspicious of us; and even if there were, our actions won't benefit you directly. But what I'm telling you is the truth. We are trying to protect centuries of our history, and I don't think you would like the way it's been changed any more than we do." She took a step forward, and God help them, she did look sincere. "One of the most amazing qualities of your species has always been your ability to see...beyond reason, to grasp truths that simple, rational logic can't provide. My hope is that you can do that here, and know that we mean well."

Schiffer frowned, and looked at Gansky; he didn't look ready to give her helpful advice. Kendrick was clearly suspicious. "...Could you...just give us a minute?" she asked.

Valla nodded. "Of course. Call for Proxima once you've made a decision," she said, and walked out of the room through the disappearing wall.

"...Well," said Gansky, once they were alone. "This certainly wasn't on the list of things I expected to happen when I got up this morning."

"We should be careful what we say, sirs," Kendrick warned. "They could easily still be listening in."

"I don't think what I expected this morning constitutes privileged security information, Sergeant," Gansky said.

"I'm just saying..." Kendrick picked up on Gansky's joke a little late. "...There's no way we can seriously buy this look-into-our-souls-and-know-we-mean-well schtick. Whatever these people are, time-traveling future soldier-cops aren't it."

"I'm starting to wonder of there is another explanation that makes more sense," said Gansky, nodding to the image of the Lafayette that was still hovering in the air. "They do seem to know quite a lot about us; they couldn't have faked specifications this detailed. And the things they do are just impossible unless they have a major technological edge."

"Sir, just because they have superior technology doesn't prove that we're in the future."

"What possible reason could a race of advanced, powerful aliens have to make us think we've been transported into the future?" asked Gansky.

Kendrick shrugged. "Maybe that's beyond our comprehension, sir."

"I don't want to start thinking like this," said Schiffer, shaking her head. "Sergeant, you're right — they could be listening to us right now. Maybe they're tapping straight into our brains with some alien technology and this is all a big hallucination. We can throw out ideas until the air runs out, but I'll bet they'll all be just as crazy as the future thing. And we'll still be at these people's mercy. Now, they do seem to know a lot already, and there's a good chance they've saved our lives; so maybe we should just hope we're stuck in a friendly alien conspiracy."

Gansky shrugged. "Why not? Maybe we'll even see a bit of this future."

Kendrick looked like he thought she'd lost her mind, but all he did was nod. "Yes, sir," he said shortly.

Schiffer sighed. "Okay, then. I suppose we see what they want us to do." She looked around the room for an intercom. "Ah, hello? ...Proxima?"

"Yes?" Proxima replied, appearing in front of them.

"How do you do that, anyway?" Kendrick demanded. "Were you hiding in here the whole time?"

"I'm everywhere," said Proxima. "Have you made a decision?"

"—Yes," said Schiffer, recovering. "We'll go along with this for now. What's the next step?"

Proxima nodded, and the section of wall all the blue-clad aliens had exited through became a doorway again. It did not, however, lead back to the hospital. Instead they saw a large room, probably a hundred meters end to end, divided into shallow pits in which uniformed personnel milled around glowing tables; a walkway ran between them. Most notable, however, were the images hanging in the air — colorful sets of glowing, intertwined lines that branched and looped all through the place for a display that put modern arthouses to shame. As Schiffer watched, the lines shifted as if trying to tease out the knots, often weaving even more intricate patterns than before. It was mesmerizing.

"Step through there," Proxima said, and vanished again.

Hesitantly, they stepped through the doorway, and looked around at the half-dozen or so personnel in jumpsuits with teal right sleeves who were scattered throughout the room. "...Now what?" Schiffer asked.

A second later, one woman emerged from underneath a canopy of twisting glowing lines to approach them. "You're the crew from the Lafayette?" she half-asked. She looked Vulcan, though with a V-shaped ridge on her forehead and hair that reached nearly to her shoulders, longer than most Vulcans Schiffer had seen.

"Major Kaitlyn Schiffer," said Schiffer. "Who are you?"

The woman smiled warmly in a way Vulcans definitely didn't normally do. "I'm Lieutenant R'Shana; I'm leading the investigation into the temporal event aboard your ship. It's an honor to meet you." She motioned back to the pit whence she had come. "Please, this way."

The pit she led them into contained a table in the center surrounded by what looked like stool-chairs and was ringed with what appeared to be glowing cymbals. "What is this place?" Schiffer asked.

"This is one of the ship's chonography labs," said R'Shana. "It's where we map the timestream and analyze any changes."

"Timestream?" asked Schiffer.

R'Shana nodded to the glowing lines. "That."

"Ah," said Schiffer mock-understandingly. "Of course."

With a knowing smile, R'Shana placed a hand on the table in the center of the room; another bunch of lines appeared in the air in front of her. These all seemed to be running in a single compact cord before fraying apart like a piece of cable that had been partially unbound. "Because of the temporal transport, we have a good idea where and when the alteration in the timestream occurred, and I've mapped out a few likely intended effects." Some of the lines that veering away from the central cord began to pulse more brightly. "There."

"This is supposed to make more sense?" asked Schiffer.

R'Shana took her hand off the table; the image remained. "Aboard the Lafayette, you were in the middle of the battle over Titan, is that right?"

Schiffer nodded. "...We'd been disabled by multiple nuke hits, and the ship was irradiated. We were trying to fire some of our remaining missiles on manual."

"Right," said R'Shana, as if she'd known much of that already. "What happened right before you were beamed onto Proxima?"

"Some guy appeared out of nowhere and tried to beat us up," said Schiffer.

"He disintegrated one of our missiles with some sort of beam weapon before we incapacitated him," added Gansky.

"Then he just started glowing and disappeared," Schiffer finished.

"We assumed it was some sort of translocator beam."

"That's a fair assumption," said R'Shana. "When did he first appear?"

"Just then," said Schiffer.

"We'd just discovered that at some of our missiles had been tampered with," said Gansky.

R'Shana frowned. "Tampered with how?"

"So they wouldn't explode," said Schiffer.

"So they couldn't be manually detonated," Gansky corrected. "They could still be operated normally through fire control. I was about to rig up the system so that we could do just that when the mystery man attacked us. It was all very strange."

"Actually, it fits," said R'Shana. "In the unaltered timeline, the same nuclear blasts that disabled the Lafayette also blinded the Romulan fleet to the ship's exact position. So when the Romulan force moved in to finish the ship off, the Lafayette — you managed to ambush them, setting off six missiles in the midst of their force, then self-destructing with a high-yield blast when ships closed in to destroy you."

Schiffer, Kendrick and Gansky looked at each other. "We did?" asked Kendrick.

"That was the plan," said Schiffer. "More or less."

"It worked well," said R'Shana. Schiffer detected a change in her tone; but it was gone before she could identify it. "But in the current variation, things didn't happen that way." She pointed at one of the pulsing lines. "My analysis so far indicates the Romulans made it through the Battle of Titan with a considerably stronger force than they did pre-variance; that could be the root cause of all the deviations."

"So what you're saying," said Gansky, "is that this is a chart of changes made to the timeline?"

"Exactly," said R'Shana.

"You can map out when people change history?" Schiffer asked.

"In a sense," R'Shana said. "The technology was pioneered by a species called the Krenim several centuries ago; it extrapolates based on variances detected by the Federation's temporal sensor network, which is reasonably comprehensive at least within this galaxy. The display prioritizes based on the magnitude of deviation from standard, so clearly it leaves out the overwhelming majority of interactions, but it's a reasonable facsimile for the purposes of analysis."

Schiffer blinked. "So...you can map out when people change history?"

R'Shana smiled. "Yes."

Schiffer raised her eyebrows. "...Cool."

"What?" asked R'Shana.

Schiffer smiled. "Never mind."

R'Shana twitched an eyebrow, but moved on. "Now that I know more specifically where to focus, I need to use our own temporal sensors to put together a more detailed map of the altered interactions."

"So was that it?" asked Kendrick. "Are we done?"

"Well, for now," said R'Shana. "I might need something more from you, but I don't yet know what."

"I'd like to see more of this ship," said Gansky. "If it's really seven hundred years ahead of the Lafayette, it should really be something."

"I'm sure Proxima can see to you," said R'Shana. "Although it would help me if at least one of you stayed while I to plot the variance in more detail." She glanced at Schiffer.

"I can," said Schiffer. "Ships never really excited me much."

"Spoken like a true Martian," needled Gansky. "No appreciation for design."

"Major, I don't think we should be separated," said Kendrick, looking concerned.

"I'll be fine, Sergeant," Schiffer assured him. "Go on with the Major, make sure he doesn't insult the ship too much."

"Proxima?" called R'Shana; the red-clad figure appeared standing just off to one side of them, right where R'Shana had been looking. "Can you show the Major and the Sergeant everything they're allowed to see?"

"Yes." Proxima glanced at Gansky and Kendrick. "Please proceed to the exit," she said, then began walking in that direction herself. Gansky and a more hesitant Kendrick did as they were told.

Schiffer watched them go, then looked back at R'Shana, who had turned back to the glowing cymbals once more. "...So do you do this a lot?" she asked.

R'Shana glanced back at her. "Do what?"

"This," said Schiffer. "Us. Snatch people out of the past to help you save the future."

"Ah." R'Shana nodded in understanding. "Not really; it's something of a last resort for us, when we can't prevent the incursion or easily correct it ourselves." She frowned introspectively. "I think you're the fourth time this has happened since I joined Proxima's crew."

Schiffer nodded. "So I guess there wouldn't be any other people like us around who we could talk to."

"Sorry, no," said R'Shana. "The others didn't come from your time period, either; and theyweren't human. So I doubt you'd find them any more trustworthy than us."

Schiffer smiled. "That obvious?"

"They were all suspicious, too," said R'Shana, smiling back. It was a perfectly natural, friendly expression, but Schiffer would never get used to seeing it on someone with those eyebrows. "I'm actually surprised you agreed to help us so quickly."

"Well, you're obviously more advanced than we are," said Schiffer. "Would it really matter whether we agreed or not?"

"We wouldn't force you to help us," said R'Shana. "But I have a hard time believing that you're only cooperating because you think we would."

Schiffer shrugged. "Maybe I'm just buying time until I figure out what you're really up to, and how to escape while foiling you."

"Ah, of course," said R'Shana, grinning. "Well, when you do uncover our nefarious plan, please let me know what gave us away."

"Sure," said Schiffer, grinning as well. "I'm nothing if not a constructive critic."

The moment passed, and the mood became more solemn. "What are you thinking?" asked R'Shana. "If you don't mind telling me."

Schiffer didn't answer right away, looking around at the room with its glowing threads twining through the air. "...It wasn't twenty minutes ago," she said, "a Romulan nuke went off right on top of us — and I knew, for a fact, that I'd been killed. There was no way to escape it; the only thing left was the actual dying. In a situation like that, you've got two options: You can lay back and wait for it to happen, or you can try to do something that means something before you go."

She trailed off. "And you chose to do something," R'Shana filled in.

"We still had an arsenal's worth of nukes sitting in our missile bays," Schiffer confirmed. "If we could just get a couple more of those into the fight, it could make a difference for everyone else who was fighting out there, and for everyone back home. But then that guy shows up, and then you guys yank me up here, and I never got to finish it. And then you tell me you've fixed my radiation poisoning and I'm not dead after all. But everyone else, everyone I was fighting to protect, they all died seven hundred years ago." She looked back at R'Shana and sighed. "I have no idea what to think."

R'Shana nodded solemnly, and took a step toward her. "I can't even imagine what it would be like. We all grow up in a world where time travel has been a fact of existence for centuries. Being pulled into it without warning, without explanation...there's nothing I could relate. But I can tell you that what you did over Titan meant more than you know. And I – all of us – want to help you succeed."

There was a faint tone from the table; R'Shana looked back and set her hand on the surface. Schiffer stood awkwardly and watched.

"...Um," she said, when R'Shana looked to be finished leaning on the table.

R'Shana raised an eyebrow. "Yes?"

"...Nothing." Schiffer looked back up at the graph of the timestream. R'Shana looked back at the glowing cymbals, and started making the image holographic timestream twist and dance around in ways that were probably significant. "Can I—" she began again.

R'Shana turned around and twitched an eyebrow at her. "What is it?"

"Sorry; I was just..." Schiffer hesitated again. "Can you tell me what happened? With the war. After Titan." She shrugged, grinning sheepishly at inherent strangeness of her question.

"Of course," R'Shana said, smiling. "In the standard timeline, you and the remainder of your task group damaged a sizable portion of the Romulan assault wing. With the Ark Royal approaching to intercept, the Romulan commander — Admiral Talvak — chose to press deeper into the system, giving them more time to make repairs rather than engaging another force immediately. The Earth fleet massed forces at Mars, meaning to meet the Romulans head-on; the Romulans needed a quick victory before the Andorian fleet arrived, so they attempted to ambush the Earth forces before they were ready."

Schiffer gulped. "There's a battle over Mars?"

"The most intense one of the war," R'Shana confirmed. "It went on for more than a day, but the Romulans were overstretched and couldn't keep up the pressure. Still, they fought to the last, hoping to wear down Earth's forces, and..." She trailed off, frowning at Schiffer. "Are you all right?"

"Y...uh, yeah," she said, unconvincingly. "Ah...my family lives on Mars. Utopia Colony. We moved there when I was twelve."

"Oh," said R'Shana. "Of course. I should have realized."

"Don't worry about it," said Schiffer. "...I've gotta sit down. Which one of these things is a chair?"

"There," R'Shana said, pointing. Schiffer sat.

"How can I ever get used to this?" she said, resting her arms on the desk and her head on her hands. "God. Everything — everyone I ever knew is ancient history to you, and everything I was looking forward to has already happened. Or hasn't."

R'Shana nodded solemnly. "Ordinarily, once a mission like this were completed, you'd be returned to your own timeline, reintegrated with your previous self with no memory of any of this. A lot of people come to find that reassuring."

"Except for me, I'd die minutes after I went back, and still lose everything," said Schiffer.

"There is..." R'Shana began, but trailed off. "...No, it's not my place to say. I'm sorry." After a second, she returned her attention to the cymbals and the timestream.

After a moment's awkward silence, Schiffer frowned. "Is there —" She shook her head. "There's one thing I'm wondering about."

"Yes?" asked R'Shana, looking back at her.

Schiffer hesitated a bit longer. "...Who won the World Cup?"

R'Shana blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"Soccer?" Schiffer asked. "On Earth, they call it football. Except where they don't. The first match'll be — was held the day after the attack on Titan, and..." Her explanation degenerated into laughter at the look R'Shana was giving her. "Yeah, that's what came into my head. I'm however far in the future, but I want to know how the matches went."

"All right," said R'Shana, laughing as well. "Proxima, can you help us here?"

Proxima's visage appeared with them. "The Soccer World Cup, 2158?" she asked.

"That's the one," said Schiffer.

Proxima paused for just a second. "The matches were cancelled due to the Romulan invasion."

"What?" demanded Schiffer, jumping to her feet. "They cancelled the whole thing? Who's idiot-ass idea was that?"

"Apparently the decision was quite controversial," Proxima replied.

"No kidding," said Schiffer. "I hope they ran them straight out the airlock. '58 was Mars's year, dammit!"

Proxima raised an eyebrow. "Given the available statistics and performance evaluations of the respective players involved, it's unlikely that Mars could have won the tournament."

Schiffer pointed a warning finger at her. "Oh, don't you start."

"Thank you, Proxima," said a still-amused R'Shana. Proxima nodded and disappeared.

"Thanks," said Schiffer to R'Shana. "I think I needed that."

"What?" R'Shana asked.

"Something familiar." Schiffer sighed, looking back up at the timestream. "So we do win, though, right? The war, I mean."

R'Shana smiled, a little more tightly than before. "Yes," she said. "Earth wins."

Schiffer nodded, and sat back down. R'Shana returned her attention to the cymbals and whatever it was she was doing with the timestream.


	3. Assessments

"_Captain's log, index 434.228. Since we've attracted the attention of the Romulans in this timeline, tracing and prevention of the incursion has become considerably more difficult. Unfortunately, 'difficult' may also describe the three persons whom our effort may now depend on."_

—

Captain Julerin looked between the two commanders who were seated with him in his ready room. In proper Benzite fashion, the venue was sparsely furnished, with no desk and only a few small tables, while the viewport was less than half the normal design size; but the lighting pattern on the walls (and the occupants) was even more intricate than usual. It was really quite pleasant, if it did feel rather alien; and only one of the three occupants was human anyway.

"I lost the transporter trace during the starslip," said Valla. "Even if we returned to the proximity, I doubt we'd be able to complete it."

"And it's likely the Romulans will be waiting for us if we try," Juma added. "It didn't take them long to locate the probe we left behind; their sensors are at least comparable to our own."

"Have the incursors relocated?" Julerin asked.

"I'm analyzing all warp and slip activity our probe recorded following our own," said Valla. "If they're smart, they waited, but we can hope they're not."

"There's a fair chance this timeline will be friendlier to them than to us," Juma put in. "If they're actively trying to evade us, it's a big galaxy — they'll be able to do it."

Julerin nodded, tentacles stroking his jowls in thought. "Then we'll have to shift our focus to realteration."

Valla nodded. "I'll tell R'Shana. But there is one other option we might have a window for." She hesitated, and Julerin looked at her questioningly. "We might still be able to trace the incursion from its terminus. I was able to determine the time of the initial transport; between it and the retrieval, we should be able to establish a trace. And I'll have to check a model, but it should be a small step from there and then to successful realteration."

"That would solve everything neatly," Julerin agreed. "But any such plan is going to rely on the displaced. How confident are we about them?"

"They are officers in one of Starfleet's major immediate precursors," said Valla. "Obviously they're pre-Federation and seven hundred years behind us, but they probably have as much motive to prevent the current timeline as we do. I think they can be convinced to cooperate."

Julerin nodded. "All right; get started on the model." Valla nodded her acknowledgment, but didn't leave just yet, as Julerin turned to Juma. "How's the crew performing?"

"They're holding up just fine so far," he said. "But this _is_ the first major variance for a lot of them, and it's...quite a major one. That's going to unsettle them a bit."

"Of course," said Julerin. "Well, we know what to do. With success, we might still prevent any of this from ever being an issue." The commanders smiled faintly at the old timers' joke. "Dismissed."

—

"You call _this_ an engine room?" asked Major Gansky.

The room he stood in was wide, warmly lit, and felt quite stately — making it about as unlike the _Lafayette_'s engine room as was possible. There did seem to be a greater concentration of consoles than anywhere else on the ship he had seen so far, but not enough to make the place seem remotely functional by Space Force standards. That there only seemed to be three personnel on duty didn't help.

"The common term is 'Engineering,'" said Proxima. "But yes."

Gansky _hmph_ed, indicating the glowing image that hovered in front of him. "What sort of ship did you say this was?" On closer inspection, the ship actually looked a bit like a sub-orbital jet; its wings split into a double hull, the upper portion molding forward into a tapered blunt-nosed fuselage while the lower section joined around an aft-facing conical object that looked a bit like a colander. The whole thing looked too smooth even for an aircraft, much less a spaceship. Indeed, it had a distinctly organic feel to it, like some giant sea creature.

"A Federation timeship," said Proxima. "My hull model is _Pyxis_-class; I'm configured for long-range contemporary and historical exploration and temporal interdiction."

"If these size figures are correct, your dimensions aren't much greater than the _Lafayette_," said Gansky. "And your mass is _lower_. ...why is everything so damn spacious?"

"Aside from considerable advancements in miniaturization technology and the fact that some of the bulkiest devices included in the _Lafayette_ have no direct equivalents within my hull, my external dimensions do not constrain my internal volume as they did in your time." Proxima fired out the statement almost as if she was on a timer, which didn't make understanding it that much easier.

Kendrick, who didn't seem quite as fascinated by the technical talk, spoke up. "Is now a good time to talk about why you keep talking about the ship in the first person?" he asked.

Proxima raised an eyebrow. "I _am_ the ship."

"It's a computer AI," Gansky explained, shrugging. "A kind of interface device for the crew."

"No." Proxima narrowed her eyes at him. "This vessel, as you perceive it, is controlled by a Vanec-type metasentient neural matrix," Proxima said. "That would be analogous to your minds. What you perceive as the ship is my body. I am the timeship _Proxima_."

Gansky frowned. "You mean you're in direct control of the ship's functions?"

"Yes," said Proxima.

"What does 'meta-sentient' mean?" asked Kendrick.

"You perceive artificial intelligence as a complex program with set responses to certain triggers that can modify itself based on past experiences," said Proxima. "My cognitive matrix was generated organically using an artificial synaptic network that, while not biological, is otherwise not unlike your neural network in structure and function. I am self-aware and conscious in...roughly the same way that you are."

Kendrick blinked a few times. "Okay, so if you're this whole ship, who's the lady we're talking to right now?"

"Thatpart_ is_ an interface mechanism," Proxima allowed. "The image is a photonic projection that I generate in order to more effectively communicate with my crew." Then she vanished; when next she spoke, her voice seemed to come from all around them. "I am perfectly capable of speaking directly through the ship's intercom, but it's been found that some people consider that to be unsettling."

Kendrick and Gansky looked at each other. "...Yeah, I can see how they might," the sergeant said eventually. Proxima reappeared, though she was standing on the opposite side of them now. The two officers started, and couldn't help but wonder if she (it?) had planned it that way.

"So you're a hologram?" asked Gansky. "How can that be? You're freestanding."

"I'm not a hologram," said Proxima. "I utilize a form of isomorphic projection."

"And what's that?" asked Kendrick.

"It's _like_ a hologram," said Proxima.

"So what's the difference?" asked Kendrick.

"Given your understanding of particle physics," Proxima said, "it's unlikely you would appreciate the distinction."

Kendrick rolled his eyes. "I bet she's just making these words up to sound more futuristic."

Proxima rolled _her_ eyes. "Even if I had an ego that required me to impress you," she said, "I wouldn't need to invent new words in order to do so."

Gansky was ready to move on. "So is that why there's such a small crew?" he asked, indicating the sparsely populated engine room. "You run everything yourself?"

"Essentially," said Proxima. "The engineers on duty monitor both me and the ship using a diagnostic apparatus that is isolated from my cognitive matrix." When Kendrick traded a befuddled look with Gansky, she clarified, "They ensure that I'm performing my various functions effectively."

"So this ship is basically run by a thinking machine?" asked Kendrick. "Who the hell's crazy idea was _that_?" Gansky frowned at his outburst, and Kendrick straightened. "Sorry, sir. ...No offense."

Proxima folded her arms. "You'll be relieved to know that your paranoia hasn't entirely been excised from Starfleet policy," she said. "The Federation has for centuries been wary of omitting non-artificial personnel from the direct chain of command, therefore my cognitive matrix has been structured in such a way as to internalize within me the Starfleet command structure and require me to serve and obey the crew."

"If you say so," said Kendrick, still looking suspicious. Proxima twitched an eyebrow at him, but didn't reply.

"But from a purely technical standpoint," said Gansky, "you could function normally without any crew at all?"

"Were it not for the inhibiting protocols, yes," Proxima said. "From a technical standpoint, artificial intelligences were largely capable of doing so even in your time period, though it is true now as then that a crew provides expertise and insight that my cognitive process can't entirely compensate for."

"Well, it's good to know we're still good for something," said Kendrick.

"I'm sure it is," said Proxima flatly.

After a slightly awkward silence, Gansky started looking for a new topic. "So what runs this thing — you?" he asked. "I'm guessing you've advanced a bit beyond fusion or antimatter."

"Quite," Proxima agreed, and nodded in the direction of the opposite end of the room. There, a spherical object about a meter in diameter stood within a geodesic lattice that connected it to glowing panels on the ceiling and floor.

"What's that?" asked Gansky.

"My primary power core," said Proxima.

"_That_'s a power core?" asked Kendrick, skeptically.

Proxima raised an eyebrow at him. "Is there some reason why it shouldn't be?"

"The _magnetic governor_ for our warp reactor is bigger than that thing," said Gansky.

"Given both that technology has advanced considerably over the last seven hundred years and this power core functions on completely different principles than your own, any size comparison is meaningless," said Proxima.

"All right," said Gansky, approaching the device. "So how _does_ this thing work?"

"There is a particular form of molecule that, when stabilized, resonates in subspace and acts as a conduit generating usable energy," Proxima said. "This assembly is designed to contain such a molecular lattice and harness their emissions as usable power. The closest analogous concept in your time period would be zero-point energy."

"This whole thing is to contain a few molecules?" asked Kendrick.

Proxima gave him a look. "Now it's too _large_ for you?" Kendrick shrugged. "—Much of this assembly is designed to ensure that the molecules can be contained and safely deconstructed in the event of any emergency. Should they become unstable, the results can be quite catastrophic."

"How catastrophic?" asked Gansky, looking at her questioningly.

"In addition to destroying this ship and anything else within several hundred kilometers, an undampened explosion would rupture subspace for several light-years in every direction, necessitating extensive reparation. The danger was great enough that the Federation actively suppressed any research into this technology for several centuries."

"Why the hell do you keep something like that around in the first place?" Kendrick asked.

"It's the only compact power source strong enough to facilitate timeslips or temporal transport," said Proxima.

Gansky whistled. "Remember when fusion was the ultimate power source that could solve all our problems?" he asked Kendrick.

"When was that, sir?" Kendrick asked.

"Sometime before warp drive came along," said Gansky. "I suppose you don't use warp drive anymore, either?" he asked Proxima.

"Not in the sense that you mean. My primary mode of transportation is known as quantum starslip, which enables my instantaneous transit over distances of several thousand light-years and has nothing to do with standard warp drive. I am capable of trans-subspace transit as well, but the functional principles have advanced considerably from those you would be familiar with."

Gansky frowned. "You know, you don't need to keep reminding us how much more advanced you are. I promise, we won't forget."

Proxima's eyebrow twitched. "Most of my systems defy all but the most superficial comparison to anything you're familiar with. I'm simply noting the limitations of my analogies."

"Right," said Kendrick. "Still, you have to be the snootiest computer I've ever spoken to. Whose idea was it to program _that_ in?"

"It's traditional for a ship's personality to be based on that of the officer who oversees the formation of its cognitive matrix," she said, folding her arms. "Though as with any life form, my ultimate behavioral pattern is more than the result of any program."

"You really think of yourself as some kind of person, then?" asked Kendrick.

"Not a person," said Proxima. "An intelligent life-form, yes, though one not comparable to any you have had experience with. It's hardly a controversial assertion; an entire section of Federation legal code is devoted to entities such as myself."

"Do you have your own lawyer, too?" asked Gansky.

Proxima raised an eyebrow. "Personal advocates have little value in absence of an adversarial legal system, which is a somewhat outdated concept."

"And there you go again," Gansky noted.

It happened too quickly for him to be sure, but for the space of an eyeblink, Gansky could have sworn the ship's photonic avatar had smiled.

—

"So these things are like your control panels?" asked Schiffer, eyeing the glowing cymbal devices that R'Shana's hands rested on.

R'Shana opened her eyes and blinked for a second before responding. "That's right. Any illuminated surface can be used as an interface point."

"How do they work, though?" Schiffer asked. "I don't see any buttons or whatever, and so far you've just been sitting there."

"The interface allows me to send signals directly to the computer," she said. "And the computer sends information directly into my brain."

Schiffer blinked. "Like...telepathy?"

R'Shana shook her head. "It's more like making the ship an extension of your body. ...Well, maybe. I'm not an engineer; I can't explain it very well."

Schiffer glanced at the table, which appeared to be one big illuminated surface. "...Can I try it? —I mean..." She sighed. "...I guess I'm wondering about my family. If there's some record of what happens to them. Happened."

R'Shana looked back at her. "Of course. Just put your hand on the table."

"Where?" asked Schiffer.

"Any illuminated section."

Schiffer put her hand on the table. It felt a bit soft, a little like it had been coated in slick rubber, but seemed otherwise unremarkable. "...Nothing's happening," she said after a moment.

"It can be difficult if you're unused to the technology," R'Shana explained. "Just concentrate."

"On what?" Schiffer asked.

"Try yourself," suggested R'Shana. "Your military file should still be on record; that could be an easy place to start. Just picture you have the ability to make the file appear in front of you, and do it. The computer will make it happen."

Schiffer shrugged, put her other hand on the table as well, and closed her eyes. _Me,_ she thought. _Kaitlyn Schiffer. Major. SF-1024-CR. Tactical officer, UES _Lafayette_. Now on some wacky future ship._

Suddenly she felt as if an explosion had gone off inside her skull. A flood of images, sounds and sensations assaulted her, but worst were a sea of thoughts that weren't hers shoving themselves into her mind. "—Ah!" she exclaimed, withdrawing her hands so she could clutch her head as the sensation vanished, leaving her with nothing but a strong sense of vertigo. "Oh, my god."

R'Shana, who had gone back to whatever she was doing, glanced back at her. "Oh, you might want to keep your eyes open. It helps limit the sensory immersion, which can be a bit overwhelming at first. There's a visual interface."

"Yeah," said Schiffer, edging away from the table. "_Now_ you tell me."

"Sorry," said R'Shana.

Schiffer glanced from her to the table, eyeing it warily. A moment later, she realized what she was doing. A moment after that, she was laughing. "This is great — I'm scared of the _table_ now," she explained when R'Shana gave her a questioning look. "Lieutenant, your century is really creeping me out a little. And this is just my fourth room."

R'Shana turned back around, after giving her a look Schiffer couldn't quite read; it might have been meant as a reassuring smile, but it came across as distracted and a little melancholy.

"How's it going?"

Both women looked up to see Commander Valla stepping down to join them. "I've just about charted the variance data," R'Shana said. "You didn't actually have to come here."

Valla sighed. "Walking a little helps when I have too much on my mind."

R'Shana nodded. "...Here, finished," she said. "I should be ready to brief you and the captain in just a few minutes." She glanced at Schiffer, who was hanging around the edge of the chronography pit and trying not to look as lost and weirded out as she was. "Is it all right if I show Major Schiffer to temporary quarters first?"

"Proxima can do that," Valla said.

"I can use the time to polish the briefing," said R'Shana, indicating what looked like a bracelet attached to the wrist of her left sleeve.

Valla hesitated for just a second. "All right, certainly. I'll check in with the captain." She nodded to Schiffer with a friendly smile, and left.

Schiffer narrowed her eyes at R'Shana. "Did I get you in trouble with the boss?"

R'Shana grinned. "Don't worry about it. I just didn't think you needed Proxima's people skills, with the kind of afternoon you're having."

"Thanks," said Schiffer, laughing.

R'Shana stood, laying a hand on the panel for another second before straightening and touching her thumb to her bracelet. (A section of it lit up when she did.) "Once I've presented the briefing and done my part to save the timeline, I should be able to settle you in a little better."

Schiffer smiled, as R'Shana led her back toward the magical disappearing door to everywhere. "I'd like that."

—

"My analysis indicates the incursion was subtle, but straightforward," said R'Shana. "In the pre-variance timeline, the _Lafayette_ inflicted severe damage on the attacking Romulan ships by manually launching and detonating a substantial number of its nuclear missiles after being disabled. That, combined the approach of a second task group led by the Earth battlecruiser _Ark Royal_ forced them to charge further into the system sooner than planned." A holographic image of the Sol system hovered over the conference room table as she narrated the events.

"According to this, the _Lafayette_ did more damage to disabled Earth ships than it did to the Romulans," Valla observed. "The Romulan force only lost one or two ships in that move."

"You're not accounting for the radiation," R'Shana said. "As far as they were concerned, the crews on those Earth ships were already dead, given the level of exposure they received. And while Romulan ships of the period were better armored than Earth vessels, they weren't able to shield against the sheer amount of radiation the _Lafayette_'s detonation produced. Admiral Talvak was concerned that his crews wouldn't survive long enough to complete their mission, so he resolved to move more quickly."

"That's very morbid," said Juma.

"It's how war was fought back then," said R'Shana. "For most soldiers on both sides, death wasn't a matter of if, but how soon." Her tone was drifting toward wistfulness. "It must have been quite something to know that you were doomed regardless of what you did, but to keep fighting for the sake of those who weren't."

"This period's a bit of a fascination for you, isn't it?" asked Valla.

R'Shana smiled self-consciously.

"Let's continue," said Julerin.

"Right," said R'Shana. "Well, not to belabor the details, Talvak's haste resulted in the Romulan force advancing before it could be reinforced by the second wave of the assault. Earth met and defeated the Romulan fleet over Mars, and the second wave couldn't advance past the asteroid belt before the Andorian and Tellarite detachments arrived to force them out of the system." She raised her eyebrows. "It is interesting — the Battle of Mars is generally regarded as the turning point of the war, because that's where Talvak's advance was stopped. The humans thought of Titan as an unmitigated disaster; but apparently, it's where they started to win the war."

"So essentially," said Valla, "if the Battle of Titan had gone better for the Romulans, they might well have succeeded in their invasion of Sol."

"That's right," said R'Shana. "And it seems that's what this incursion has accomplished. Preventing the _Lafayette_ from detonating its arsenal allowed Admiral Talvak to proceed at a more deliberate pace, and still attack Mars before the Andorian reinforcements arrived."

"Why would that matter?" asked Juma. "The human industrial base back then was on Earth, not Mars."

"But the human fleet was at Mars," said R'Shana. "The attack on Sol was never intended as an invasion; the goal was to drive a wedge between Earth and its allies. If Earth became unable to contribute to the fight, even for the few years it would have taken to rebuild the fleet, it's likely the Andorians and Tellarites wouldn't have seen much reason to continue aiding them, and the alliance would likely have disintegrated."

The image of the solar system was replaced with a graph of the timestream. "In the current variance," R'Shana continued, "it seems that's precisely what happened. The Romulan invasion force actually suffered worse losses because Talvak didn't elect to retreat after the Tellarites arrived; but his force was never expected to return home anyway; it was the humans who couldn't afford the extra damage. The humans' alliances collapsed, and the war ended not long afterward on terms very favorable to the Romulan Empire."

"And we think that was the intended result of the incursion?" Valla asked.

"I can't find another more likely option," said R'Shana. "Everyone involved in the Battle of Titan died, there or soon afterward, in both the pre- and post-variance timelines, and a personal connection isn't very likely over a seven hundred-year gap anyway. Of course, with this large a variance the timeline differs from ours in any number of ways, but these can all be traced to the outcome of the war; and we don't know of any motive that would connect the incursors to any of the secondary effects. Obviously more information on the incursors would help there."

"How much do we know about them now?" asked Julerin.

"Well, this goes well beyond the work of your average private agent," said Juma. "They must have had access to quite a lot of timestream data to effect such a major variance with such a minor act — assuming this is the result they intended, of course. And they seemed to be using a temporal transporter, which no one outside the timefleet should have at all."

Julerin nodded slowly; R'Shana, Valla and Juma all waited for his decision. "As much as I'd like to know the incursors' identity, we should focus on undoing the variance. And since we can't trace it from the twenty-ninth century, that means we'll have to go to the twenty-second." He looked at Valla. "The _Lafayette_ personnel. Can we use them?"

Valla hesitated. "I'm not sure they trust us completely, but they've been cooperative so far. R'Shana?"

"I don't think it'll be a problem," she said. "They're out of their element, of course, but really all we'd be asking of them is what they'd have done anyway given knowledge of the situation — protect their ship and their world." She glanced from Julerin to Valla. "I can talk to them; I think I've developed a bit of a rapport with Major Schiffer, at least."

Julerin nodded. "All right. Michel, Miara, keep scanning; but we'll take it this way for now. That's all."

He departed for the bridge, but the others hung behind for a moment. "A bit of a rapport?" Juma asked, raising his eyebrows at R'Shana.

R'Shana frowned. "What?"

"You do seem just a little bit taken with her," Valla said, smiling.

"I—" R'Shana shook her head, laughing. "Please. I'm completely professional."

The two Commanders stared her for a moment, Juma folding his arms.

"She's —" R'Shana began, shrugging. "They're all from an almost legendary part of our history. You're right; it's...having three soldiers from that era alive and walking the ship right now is...quite something." She sighed. "I just wish the circumstances were different."

Smiling, Valla patted her on the shoulder. "Just...be careful. Remember, what's history to you is life to them." With that, she stepped out onto the bridge.

Juma hung around another second, frowning as if he were about to say something. "What is it?" R'Shana asked.

"...Nothing," Juma said. "Oh, ask them about money when you get a chance."

R'Shana frowned. "Money?"

"I've always been curious," said Juma. Shrugging, he left for the bridge as well.

—

Schiffer glanced from R'Shana to Kendrick and Gansky, and back. All of them were sitting in very comfortable seats in the temporary quarters R'Shana had showed her to earlier — and which looked more like a three-bedroom hotel suite.

"So...Earth loses the war, all because we didn't blow up our missiles? That's..." She shook her head. "You've got to be kidding."

"I know; it's...quite something," R'Shana admitted. "Usually, the timeline is more resilient than that; but there's always a few cases where some seemingly insignificant thing can have incredible consequences."

"So you're going to put us back on the _Lafayette_ so we can...what?" asked Kendrick. "Do we just go on like this whole future thing never happened?"

"Essentially," said R'Shana. "We'll use the transporter to reintegrate you with your previous selves — from your perspective, it will be as if we...turned back the clock, to the morning before the battle, but you'll remember everything that happened between then and the time of your transport. That will allow you to—"

"Wait a minute," Schiffer said. "You're going to combine us with...ourselves?"

R'Shana nodded. "Don't worry — we do it all the time."

"...Your century's really kind of creepy," Schiffer said, shaking her head. "So what kind of equipment are we talking about?"

"We'll be giving you a device called a servo tricorder," said R'Shana, holding up something that looked like a fat pen. "You'll be able to use it to determine when and how your ship is being tampered with, and correct the changes."

"May I?" asked Gansky, motioning to the tricorder. R'Shana handed it over.

"What if the guy with the disintegrator beam tries to zap us again?" asked Schiffer.

"The tricorder can also function as a defensive device," said R'Shana. "We'll also be monitoring you from a distance, and should be able to detect any threatening presence."

Schiffer and Kendrick looked at each other. Gansky was still trying to examine the tricorder. "This all seems so...low-tech," said Schiffer. "You've got the technology to snatch people across...hundreds of light-years and hundreds of years. Why go through all this with us?"

"We can educate you in the use of our equipment easily enough," said R'Shana. "It's a lot harder to educate _our_ people how to function in a different time period. Every action we take back then is a potential variance; you, on the other hand, are supposed to be part of this time frame. All you have to do is act naturally."

"While fighting off a sinister time-plot from the future," said Schiffer.

R'Shana nodded. "Right. That as well."

"So what's the endgame?" asked Kendrick. "How does this play out?"

"We'll be sending back a small shuttle to monitor the situation," said R'Shana. "Ideally we'll be able to detect something from there and then that we haven't been able to from here and now, which will allow us to intercept whoever caused this incursion. If so, there's a chance we can prevent the incursion from ever happening."

"What does that mean for _us_, though?" Kendrick asked.

"—Right," said R'Shana, smiling sheepishly. "Events, for you, would play out as if none of this had happened, until...their original conclusion."

"The one where we detonate the _Lafayette_'s magazines," said Schiffer.

R'Shana nodded. "You'd remember everything that's happened to you since then, so essentially you'd be reliving that entire day."

Schiffer shook her head. "Just what I always wanted. The power to travel through time, so I can relive the day I die."

"I'm sorry," said R'Shana.

"...Well," Schiffer said, smiling faintly, "at least now I know we're saving United Earth _and_ the twenty-ninth century. That's pretty something."

"Yes, it is," said R'Shana. "And history remembers."

"Considering what that particular fame brought us," said Gansky, "we might have been better off if history had forgotten." He handed R'Shana back the tricorder. "You said you'd show us how to use this?"

"Of course," said R'Shana, standing. The others followed her to one of the tables. "The glowing sections are interface panels," she said. "They're capable of relaying knowledge directly into your minds." She nodded to Schiffer. "It's just like in the lab."

Kendrick was frowning. "This thing just...puts stuff in our heads?"

"By simulating the same nerve impulses that allow you to gather information naturally," R'Shana confirmed. "The system just..." She spent a second hunting for the expression. "...Removes the middleman."

"And how do we know it's not going to program us into some kind of sleeper time bombs?" Kendrick asked.

"What?" R'Shana blinked. "...No, that couldn't happen. There are safeguards built into the system to prevent its ever being used in such a way."

"According to you," said Kendrick.

"Sergeant," said Gansky, "if they wanted to brainwash us, I'm sure they could have found a less roundabout way to do it."

"We just put our hands on the thing, right?" Schiffer asked, stepping forward.

R'Shana nodded. "Close your eyes, and try to be calm."

The Major nodded, eyeing the table. "...What the hell, guys," she said, and slipped into one of the stool-chairs. "Let's save history."


End file.
